The modern French
population is largely native-born and represents a fusion of many
peoples of Celtic, Germanic, Latin, and Slavic origins. Contrary to
what has happened in many other countries, the immigrants have
blended so well into existing French society that today it is
difficult to determine the ethnic origins of most French citizens.
More ethnically prominent are the 20th-century immigrants, including
an estimated 4 million foreigners--mainly Portuguese, Spanish, and
Italians--and many French citizens, a large number of them Arabs, who
entered France in the 1960s from former French colonies in Algeria
and sub-Saharan Africa. In 1990 an estimated 2.5 million North
Africans lived in France.

The French language
is understood and spoken by virtually the entire population, although
other languages and dialects persist alongside French in peripheral
areas; they include BASQUE, Alsatian, Corsican, Breton, Provencal,
Catalan, and Flemish. About 80% of the population nominally belongs
to the Roman Catholic church, although only a minority of these
participate regularly in church activities. Protestants constitute
less than 2% of the population; Jews, about 1%; Muslims, who have
entered France recently from former North African colonies, about 4%.

Demography

In 1801, France,
with a population of 28 million, was the most populous country in
Europe; by 1850, the population had grown to 36 million. During the
late 19th and early 20th centuries, however, the French birthrate
dropped to levels lower than those in the rest of Europe, and France
experienced a much slower rate of population growth than the rest of
the continent. At the end of World War II the population was only 40
million. After 1946, however, the birthrate rose to 21 per 1,000, a
higher rate than had existed for more than a century. Although the
rate fell to 18 per 1,000 in 1963 and to 13.6 per 1,000 in 1989, the
last few decades have witnessed an unprecedented expansion that added
millions of people to France's schools and, later, to the labor force
and consumer markets.

This unusual
demographic evolution explains why population densities in France
today are only one-half to one-third that of other Western European
nations. Within France, the population distribution is uneven and
closely reflects levels of economic development. Regions without
industry or with poor soils are only sparsely populated. On the other
hand, the regions with the largest populations are the great centers
of economic activity: the industrial north; Lyon, where industry is
important; along the Cote d'Azur, which depends on tourism; and
especially Paris, where diverse economic activities are concentrated.

Since 1950, France
has experienced extremely rapid urbanization. Almost all cities have
increased in size, at the expense of the rural population. In the
early 1990s, more than three-quarters of the country's population
lived in cities, and the figure is even higher when commuters are
included. France has, therefore, now largely caught up with the rest
of Europe in its urbanization. The country is unusual in its urban
structure. Metropolitan Paris is the home of one-sixth of France's
population and is the largest urban agglomeration in Europe outside
the Russian federation. Other French cities are small by comparison,
the largest being the metropolitan areas of Lyon (1.2 million) and
Marseille (1.1 million); next in size is LILLE, which has a
metropolitan area of 1,020,000; after that comes Bordeaux, which has
640,000, Toulouse (541,000), NANTES (465,000), NICE (450,000), and
STRASBOURG (400,000).

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